[Lowfer] Noisy night

[Garry Hess]

Sounded like July here last evening with a huge, white blob of lightning 
activity showing up from the South on the map at 
http://thunderstorm.vaisala.com/explorer.html. Surprisingly, the Nuuk, 
Greenland and Labrador Navtex stations on 518 kHz came through on their 
0340Z and 0350Z, respectively, time slots. Haven't decoded the former 
for awhile but perhaps that's because it didn't even both to transmit 
its usual "no message on hand" message like it did last night.

Saw an email from David indicating the VLF source at 18.9 kHz was active 
again at 0433Z. Looked shortly after that but saw nothing here. Perhaps 
because it was buried by QRN.

Lowfer EMP was in there around 0700Z, by which time the QRN was abating 
and conditions to the west were picking up, at least selectively. Looked 
briefly at the lowfer watering hole but only saw local SIW. NDB FCH, 
CHANDLER, CA on 344 kHz was fairly good copy at 0815Z but MOG,MONTAGUE, 
CA on 404 kHz was weak. Tried to decode DGPS from BC on several 300 kHz 
frequencies after that to no avail. 315 kHz is the best possibility with 
an omnidirectional e-probe but 320 kHz would be best with a loop that 
could null the co-channel station in AL. All the Canadian stations are 
200 bps and that's a bit harder to decode than the 100 bps stations 
prevalent in the US. Might not have much time left to log new stations 
because of the announcement at 
http://www.gpsworld.com/gps/news/canadian-dgps-service-be-de-commissioned-9803.

73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL